Have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ system with 1GB of DDR2-667. Want to upgrade and weighing my options. My easiest upgrade path would be straight to a 6400+ and 4GB of Corsair DDR2-800. This would cost about $225 after the mail-in rebate on the memory. I will throw in an 8800GT or 8800GTS regardless of the CPU and memory, so I am not weighing that.
But, I am concerned that the 6400+ is not the best bang for my buck. I could go alternate route, which would involve an Asus P5-NE and either an E2160 overclocked to 3.0GHz or an E8400 overclocked to 4.0GHz, same memory. This would be quite a bit more expensive, but all of the benchmarks that I can find suggest that either one of these systems (particularly the E8400) would be in a completely different class than the 6400+.
The end result that I am looking for is a system that will be "future proof" for at least the next 2-3 years. My feeling is that the E8400 Wolfsdale with 4GB will be all the power that I can use and then some until the next major release of Winblows. The P5-NE supports Core2Duo Quad chips as well, so I could always pop in a Q6600 or one of its successors with a BIOS flash later on. I just don't see the 6400+ keeping up with the curve. Is my thinking wrong?
You're thinking is not wrong. My personaly opinion is to go with the Q6600 as it will better future proof your system since its a quad core and in the next 2-3 years you will see games and programs take advantage of the extra cores.
Plus with the Q6600 you can OC it to 3GHz easily. Now the E8400 is a monster if you want to game. But for future proof it might not be the best choice although right now for gaming it rocks the socks.
I had the same delema but in the end decided on the Q6600 over the E6700. Then again I always like bigger number when it comes to my PC hardware such as 2-4GB memory or 1Tb HDD space.
Well, yes and no. The 6400+ wouldn't be a terrible choice. And the way things are going in the PC game dev world, each new title negates the term "future proof". Too many games are focusing on eye candy and less on content. So it really depends on what you play, or which app you use.
The Intel systems are indeed faster, and definitely show it on benchmarking. However, as always, your choice of GPU will reflect more on gaming performance than CPU choice.
The next gen Intel systems will not be LGA 775 anyway, so at most, you'd be able to toss in one of the 45nm quads as your best proc down the road.
Future proofing a system has gotten very hard in the past few years.
In the end though, I'd have to agree that the Wolfie would be your best bet if it falls within your budget.
Good luck with your build!
---------------
Xeon X3350@3.4GHz w/TRUE 120 - Asus Maximus Formula SE
4x1GB Corsair Dominator DDR2-1066 - EVGA 8800 GT @ 675 Core
2x 36G WD Raptor 10k RPM
Antec 900 w/PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610w
Before I start, I will state that I am not biased towards any manufacturer of processor....
I am biased to which manufacturer makes the better processor at this moment in time....
If you want to future proof your self for the next 3 to 4 years I would recommend going for a Quad core processor...
Within a few weeks availability of the 9300 and 9450 quad will be here and they will not cost that much more than the E8400 ( well the 9300 will anyway ).
Go for one of those....
There is a new version of the 8800GTS which has the amazing GT updated with a 1Gb of memory which i believe runs faster than the GTX card costing normally 200 dollars plus more.... do not buy the old gts as the gt is a faster card...
the next thing is to think about your hard disk, a 500gb 16mb cache Western Digital ( the best in my opinion of all the manufacturers ) will put the cherry on top of the cake..
The 6400 processor is based on old technology and dont be supprised if the socket changes on AM and AM2 for a AM3 as ddr 3 is on its way to be the norm within the next year....
Go for either a Asus or a Gigabyte p35 ds series motherboard you wont be disapointed as they are great overclockers..
If youre looking for bang for the buck, pickup the 5000+BE and OC it to 3 or 3.2
I agree with this completely. The 5000+ BE is cheaper, overclocks better, runs cooler, and uses less power. I've seen overclocks as high as 3.5 ghz on air with the 5000+ BE, so it has the potential, though keep in mind that just because a few made it that high, not all will.
---------------
Evil lurks in the databanks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.
You're not going to be future proof for the next 2-3 years no matter what you buy. Take note of the trendlines on SSD's. Within 2 years it will cost $300 for blazingly fast SSD RAID performance. So much so that an athlon X2 4600 with these drives installed will feel faster than a 4GHz E8400. Anyone who knows anything can tell you that its better to have a X2 4600 and a 7200 rpm HDD than a E6750 @ 3.4GHz with a 5400 rpm HDD.
Also, you have the new chips on the horizon with triple channel memory...
Yeah, the 5000+ BE is better than the 6400+, at least bang for buck. It OC's very easily, and is cooler than the 6400+.
Also, check to see if your board has compatibility for Phenom/AM2+ procs, as that'd allow you to get a tri-core or quad-core Phenom eventually, it just won't use its HT3, but I'm not sure how much that'll matter in overall performance.
Regarding the CPU, I wouldn't upgrade from an X2 to an X2. Your 4200+ is probably capable of a 2.6 - 2.8GHz overclock itself, which isn't that far off from an X2 6400+ @ 3.2GHz. You should definitely upgrade the RAM though, 1GB really is insufficient nowadays, especially if you intend to run Vista, but you probably already knew that anyway.
I wouldn't bother with an E21x0 in your case either, again, even overclocked to 3GHz it wouldn't be that much faster than your X2 4200+ overclocked to 2.6 - 2.8GHz to be worth the expense of completely changing the platform.
The real 'step up' in performance (as in actually noticeable in real world usage, not just 10% differences in benchmarks) would be the E8400 of course, overclocked to 4GHz it truly is a league above all the other options currently available. It has the potential to effectively double the performance of an X2 4200+, of course all this performance will come at a cost as you know.
The 6400 processor is based on old technology and dont be supprised if the socket changes on AM and AM2 for a AM3 as ddr 3 is on its way to be the norm within the next year....
i agree, ddr3 memory will be here in the next year.
shadowmaster wrote:Take note of the trendlines on SSD's. Within 2 years it will cost $300 for blazingly fast SSD RAID performance.
i agree also. some boutique computer maufactureres are ALREADY using ssd's for the OS drive and seeing boot times between 5-8 seconds.
so ya, future proofing a computer now is kinda tough.
so ya, future proofing a computer now is kinda tough.
I always figured that future proofing was tough, no matter what era. Doesn't matter what you buy or when you bought it, a year or so later it was outdated. After three years, whatever you bought is a dinosaur. I'm happy enough if a major piece of hardware makes it through three years.
---------------
Evil lurks in the databanks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.
Future-proofing a PC is possible for a couple of years, but you have to be diligent in the timing of the purchases. The key is to buy at the start of a product generation, not towards the end.
For example, a PC from late 2006 (let's say an E6600 and 8800GTS) would still be considered a more than reasonable gaming machine, even by todays standards. Both these products were at the beginning of the development cycle. It will take until Nehalem and a GeForce 9 series card to fully 'obsolete' such a system. By the time that happens, it would have been a full 2 years of said system 'keeping up' with the performance curve.
The 5000+BE is $89,The 6000+ is $111.
The Corsair ram is onsale every other month for $29 for 2X1GB.
So you can get a large boost/upgrade for low as $120.
The 8800GTS (G92) is down to $258 last week from Tiger.
Message edited by ZOldDude on 02-15-2008 at 12:34:26 AM
---------------
*While we crash and burn, small, low tech, agrarian societies such as the Hmong in the mountains of Laos will continue on without so much as blinking an eye.*
Sorry Jonn, we dont know what you do with your computer so we cant possibly give decent advice.
If the most taxing thing you do is some light to medium gaming, blow the wad and get a 3870x2.
BTW, if you are still using windize XP 32 bit, or vista 32 bit, 4 gigs of ram will not do you any good. Stop @3 gigs. Anything more than that, and windoze does such a mess of it that it's slower than a page file.
Better jump now it takes a while to swim to shore, By the time you get there you will have to swim back to the ship because you will find you landed on the wrong shore with cannibals.
A dual core might be stretching it for three years out when hopefully software will be more multithreaded.
If your motherboard is capable of a Phenom, I'd wait for B3 and drop one of those puppies in there.
And here I was about to tell him that his best bet, technologically, is to go Intel on a motherboard that should accept Nehelem down the line. Is that only the X48?
He's not asking for the best bang for the buck upgrade for what he has, but is willing to switch companies and buy a new motherboard. If he doesn't have social ethics issues with Intel, then going Wolfdale in a completely new build is the way to go.
Me, I'll buy Intel when regulators ensure that Intel pays for their OEM rebates, not before. By then, AMD might even have viable budget 45nm Swifts with one R700 core and 3 flawless clocked up Phenoms. Right now, he's in a situation similar to me, I have that 4600+ 65 watt Windsor, which will probably CPU limit the 3870x2.
Just ordered the 650 watt Antec Neo with the 6+2 PCIe connector so I can finally install the card when it arrives Tuesday. To ensure that there's enough cooling, I also ordered the Antec Nine Hundred case, which was $109 with free shipping. I missed the $50 rebate on an Antec TPQ 850 by one day, so I didn't get that.
Maybe neither of us are fanboys, we just get irritated at AMD and/or Intel?
Unless one has issues with a particular company's policies or practices, then the best tech at the start of a generation is the best futureproofing, so a Wolfdale is great. I've been tempted to leave my modder wife out of my hippie tiff with Intel and get her a Q6600, because she needs a quad core, whereas I don't. If Wolfdale era quad cores are a couple of months away, then I could get her one of those instead.
All I want is a Phenom free of errata and core flaws that's as close to 3 gigahertz as possible. I don't overclock but I am concerned about being CPU limited. That might even be the case when I get a 20" LCD monitor next month.
